Model comparison
Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Nova 2 Lite
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 39.0 on the Noometry Index. Nova 2 Lite costs 7.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
Summary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher in 9 categories and Nova 2 Lite in 0 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads 46.1 to 26.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Vectara Hallucination Rate: 10.6% for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 5.1% for Nova 2 Lite.
- Nova 2 Lite is cheaper at $0.30 / $2.50 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Claude Sonnet 4.6.
Side by side
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Amazon |
| Noometry Index | 50.1 | 39.0 |
| Released | 2026-02-17 | 2025-12-01 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 1M | 1M |
| Max output | 128K | 64K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $0.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $2.50 |
| Results tracked | 57 | 19 |
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Category by category
Coding Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.0 (#62), Nova 2 Lite: 40.1 (#131)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1504 | 1386 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 75.2% | — |
| DeepSWE | 29.9% | — |
| FrontierCode | 24.3% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1521 | — |
| SciCode | 46.8% | — |
| WeirdML | 66.1% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,327 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 39.1 (#26), Nova 2 Lite: 23.9 (#114)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | 53.4% | — |
| APEX-Agents | 43% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 27.1% |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 9.3% | — |
| DeepResearch Bench | 54.9% | — |
| OSWorld | 72.1% | — |
| ExploitBench | 23.6% | — |
| GBAEval | 48.8% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 18% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1221 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 7,204 | — |
Reasoning Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 46.1 (#40), Nova 2 Lite: 26.4 (#120)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1485 | 1364 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 80.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.5% | — |
| CritPt | 3.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 13% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 76.3% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 16% | — |
| DTBench | 89.9% | — |
| LMCA | 46.5% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 152.25 | — |
| ForecastBench | 62 | — |
Math Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.9 (#41), Nova 2 Lite: 34.8 (#154)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1463 | 1359 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 85.8% | — |
| ProofBench | 45% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 32.4% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 8.3% | — |
Knowledge Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 51.6 (#60), Nova 2 Lite: 42.5 (#88)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.6% | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1500 | 1360 |
| GPQA Diamond | 87.4% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 35.5% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 38.0 (#61), Nova 2 Lite: —
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1482 | — |
Multilingual Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 54.6 (#39), Nova 2 Lite: 47.3 (#148)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1337 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1491 | 1364 |
| LMArena French | 1465 | 1381 |
| LMArena German | 1428 | 1343 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1419 | 1273 |
| LMArena Korean | 1411 | 1284 |
| LMArena Russian | 1440 | 1343 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1465 | 1372 |
Instruction Following Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 77.6 (#23), Nova 2 Lite: 70.7 (#156)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1476 | 1335 |
Long Context Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 45.3 (#40), Nova 2 Lite: 40.6 (#145)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1479 | 1335 |
Writing & Preference Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads
Claude Sonnet 4.6: 70.4 (#22), Nova 2 Lite: 54.1 (#150)
| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Nova 2 Lite |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1458 | 1362 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1435 | 1291 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1464 | 1338 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1810 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1207 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 better than Nova 2 Lite?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.1 to 39.0 on the Noometry Index. Nova 2 Lite costs 7.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Claude Sonnet 4.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Nova 2 Lite?
Nova 2 Lite is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens; Claude Sonnet 4.6 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Nova 2 Lite better for coding?
Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 46.0 versus 40.1 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 1M tokens.
How many benchmarks do Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Nova 2 Lite share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude Sonnet 4.6 has 57 scored results on Noometry and Nova 2 Lite has 19.